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Permanence and asymptotic stability in diagonally convex reaction–diffusion systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2011
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Reaction–diffusion systems are widely used to model competition in, for example, the scientific fields of biology, chemistry, medicine and industry. It is often not too difficult to establish positive uniform upper bounds on solution components of such systems, but the task of establishing strictly positive uniform lower bounds (when they exist) can be quite troublesome. Conditions for the existence of such lower bounds in Lotka–Volterra competitve models are already well known. A general context for the understanding of these conditions is provided in this paper, by establishing more general permanence criteria (for the nonexplosion and noncollapse to zero of solutions) in the class of diagonally convex competitive reaction–diffusion systems with zero flux Neumann boundary conditions. This class admits most famous competition models as special cases. The asymptotic (large time) behaviour of positive solutions within the bounds of permanence is also considered and it is shown that the methods of proof for asymptotic stability (and hence resilience) normally associated with order-preserving systems (such as comparison arguments) are also applicable, in a slightly generalised form, to competitive systems as long as the competitive interactions are not too strong. The general criteria for permanence obtained here provide a natural method for developing new and easily verifiable permanence conditions for a host of non Lotka–Volterra competition models, as is illustrated by considering three famous special cases. In one of these cases known results are recovered, while in the other two cases new conditions for solution permanence are established.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A: Mathematics , Volume 128 , Issue 1 , 1998 , pp. 147 - 172
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1998
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